Hey.

Well, Bandcamp could theoretically stop them from doing that, but it's a moot point until such time as something like that happens. It might theoretically be possible to truly no-platform someone on the internet, but it's hard for me to see how. This isn't erasing their music so much as it's limiting it to marginal…

Genre purists are intensely tiresome. I play in a few different groups that cross a few different genres. If there are two things to which I can attest, it's that a) local music scenes are packed with purists and b) they're all the fucking same. Having rules about what kind of instruments or sounds are allowable in…

I like all of the instruments that I mentioned. I also play in folk groups. It seems to be connected. Reed instruments, as a family, have been with us for a very long time and in a great many places (I think pretty much every area where reeds grow had people who made them into instruments).

When I look at the instruments that people say they can't stand to hear, I come to the conclusion that people mainly just don't like many of the reed instruments. Harmonicas, accordions, bagpipes; even clarinets come in for excoriation here and there. The first three are pretty common in various strains of folk…

The ones that start with x always make me wonder how I'm supposed to pronounce them. Zee? Aspirated He? Zhe? I like sie and hir because the sounds are already common in English and their pronunciation is pretty easy to pick up from their written forms.

Regarding Allen, I think the comment referred to Dylan Farrow's account of Allen sexually assaulting her, not the Soon-Yi situation. It would be a much closer example.

I will go to bat for sie and hir forever (easy to spell, easy to say), but I recognize that it's not happening. I've used them successfully on exams at university, but I don't really see them getting recognized in many non-academic contexts.

If you are or will become a sketch comedy writer, treat that little episode as a gimme. You don't even have to change anything for that to be hilarious.

That's disappointing. I'll never get that silly-ass position or why male comedians keep falling into it.

Is Norm even young enough for The Handmaid's Tale to have been required reading in school? It didn't get assigned to any of my classes in high school, but some friends had a class where it was. I remember one of my friends mildly panning it based on the prose style, though she was otherwise sympathetic to the…

Just wait if you can. The prices in Toronto are always going to suck, but not this badly. This bubble will burst.

I mention this every so often when the AVC gets on some hilarious and not at all cliched tear about scary clowns. I met a clown about a year or two ago (not on duty, just someone who happened to be a clown) and got a ride home from her. She was wonderful and sweet and devoted to clowning as a calling. She said that…

I kind of doubt this will be much good either, but the show has been a continual boon to community theatre because it's so malleable. I've seen two different productions in my city that took it in fairly different directions from each other.

Much of that depends on the staging of a given production. I saw one a while back that presented the whole thing as a sort of pop mythology (every character was linked with a Marvel or DC character). I tend to think that the movie version is entirely about the tension inherent in that question, but comes down mostly…

I get the impression that he is at least somewhat pro-life, albeit in a mildly more consistent way than many (as he seems to be against humans getting killed after birth too). I can't actually think of anything at all that would indicate misogyny. All that I know about his views on LGBT+ issues is that he's…

I think you can take him at his word when he says that he's apolitical. It just doesn't seem to be something that he talks about or that drives his actions. I don't think he's right-wing as much as he probably just defaults on some of his views.

I was reluctant to talk about some of the things I'd discovered about myself in therapy to even my closest friends for a long time. There are definitely people out there who will treat you differently, and I guess I was secretly worried that these extremely important people might turn out that way (as I'd had a bit…

My girlfriend's cats generally seem to get that they need to stay off the bed when we're actually having sex. The second that's done, at least one of them will hop right on to be snuggled. I always wake up with one of them at my back.

Hejira is an incredible album. "Coyote" alone feels like the musical embodiment of every road trip I've ever taken.